The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

How Do You Spell ‘LOL’? Idiotic Error by Former New Yorker Fact-Checker

When Bob Tyrrell told me about this on the phone, I was astonished: Evidently, James Pogue is a person with literary pretensions who once worked as a fact-checker for the New Yorker. In order to support his literary pretensions — he’s “writing a novel,” as are, inter alia, about nine thousand unpublished lawyers who dream of […]

How to Deal With Biased Media Liars (and Other Such Worthless Scalawags)

“My God, Scarlett O’Hara! When I start out to cut somebody up, you don’t think I’d be satisfied with scratching him with the blunt side of my knife, do you? No, by God, I cut him to ribbons.” — Tony Calvert, in Gone With the Wind Well, that’s merely an analogy — a colorful literary […]

Disgraced Hack Elspeth Reeve Decides to Double Down on ‘RAAAAACISM’!

You will recall the O-Phone video: Woman says she’s voting for Obama because he gave her a free cellphone. Elspeth Reeve of the Atlantic has decided it’s racist! racist! racist! to laugh at that video because . . . uh, racism. Now the World’s Least Reliable Fact-Checker™ has checked her facts again and decided Patterico is […]

Polls: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies?

@jaycosttws Like Darwinism and global-warming theory, poll-based coverage involves the illusion of “scientific” certainty. — Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) September 26, 2012 @jaycosttws Strange to say, I was taught that journalism requires a skeptical disposition. Old-fashioned, I guess. — Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) September 26, 2012 DAYTON, Ohio By the time you read this, I […]

The Best Revenge: Ohio-Bound

By the time you read this, I should be within a couple hours of Lima, Ohio, where Paul Ryan is due for a 2:30 p.m. rally. Right now — as I’m writing this — it’s about 2 a.m. and I’m awaiting my ride while laughing at the latest ridiculousness from Neal Rauhauser: McCain has never […]

Obama: An Authentic Phony

Back during the 2008 GOP primary campaign — most of which actually happened in 2007 — I wasn’t yet an independent blogger, but was “a man under authority” at The Washington Times. Working on the news side of the operation, the public expression of my opinions was streng verboten, which of course didn’t mean I […]

If You’re Plagiarizing in J-School …

. . . that’s kind of a large hint that maybe a journalism career isn’t going to work out for you. Consider the case of Columbia University journalism student Jade Bonacolta, who decided that a great way to write a story would be to plagiarize a New York Times article published two days earlier. This […]

‘Because Truth Is an Absolute Defense’

The quoted phrase from the Moore v. Hoff ruling should be drilled into the head of every blogger, as it was drilled into my head years ago as a beginning reporter. How many times did my editors tell me, “Get your facts right, and they can’t touch you”? An editor has a moral obligation to defend at […]

« go back — keep looking »